Why scientists of Indian origin are leaving a better life and returning to India

Such homecomings are driven partly by family compulsions, but now it is a flurry of incentives by the govt that has helped scientists relocate to India.ET Bureau | August 15, 2016, 10:04 IST

By Vanita Srivastava

Call it the Swades 2.0. Ambitious and bright, a rash of scientists had left India for better opportunities and, over the years, gained vital exposure to the best global research labs. After years of experimenting and collaborating with some of the top scientists in the world, they have now chosen to return to their homeland.

Traditionally, such homecomings are driven partly by family compulsions, but of late it is a flurry of fellowships and incentives by the government that has helped the scientists relocate to India. The main attraction now is absorption into an institute where they can be part of the permanent faculty.

Says department of science and technology secretary Ashutosh Sharma: “Turning brain drain into brain gain requires creation of appropriate opportunities at certain critical stages in the progression of a scientific career.” The first critical point, he adds, is right after PhD when substantial resources to train a scientist have already been committed. The second intervention is to attract the scientists who have gone abroad back to the country.

RA Mashelkar, a former director-general of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), says, “India is moving from brain drain to brain gain to brain circulation. An Indian scientist would love to stay in India, provided he is given a challenging job here. And I strongly believe that India is becoming a land of opportunity.”

India is indeed rapidly becoming a global research, design and development hub. More than 1,000 companies from around the world have set up their R&D centres in India. Over 2,00,000 scientists and engineers are working there, at least a fourth of whom have returned from overseas. Here are eight of them:

Shashi Kumar group leader, metabolic engineering, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.

From Uttar Pradesh to the United States may seem a long journey, but for Shashi Kumar it was a logical progression.

Now a group leader at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Delhi, Kumar, who was born in Tanda village, went to the US in 1988 soon after submitting his PhD thesis in the University of Delhi.

After staying there for 12 years and getting a taste of various universities — University of Virginia, Charlottesville, University of Central Florida, Orlando, University of California, Berkeley — he returned to India in 2010 on a Ramalingaswami Fellowship. “Coming back was a tough call and I kept postponing it for almost a year. But deep within I wanted to do something for Indian science, which perhaps triggered my decision,” says Kumar, the son of a farmer.

The best part of working in India is the sense of belonging. “But Indian science has serious challenges that need to be addressed, including that of research funds and quality of research,” says Kumar. Although the government is making an effort to arrest brain drain, it should enhance measures to attract the talent back to the country, he adds.

Is he here in India for good? Maybe not, says Kumar who would have been a farmer if he hadn’t chosen the scientific path. Has he thought about returning to the US? “Yes,” he lets on, “I may go back after my retirement. Science has no retirement age.”

Shilpi Gupta assistant professor, electrical engineering, IIT-KanpurWhen Shilpi Gupta left for the US in 2008 after doing her BTech in engineering physics from IITDelhi, she was clear that she was going there only for higher studies.

She joined the University of Maryland for an MS and PhD in electrical engineering.

In July 2014, Gupta moved back to India under the Ramanujan Fellowship and is currently an assistant professor in electrical engineering at IIT-Kanpur.

She works in the field of nanophotonics to study how light interacts with matter and how to make chipscale devices for application in optical communication and sensing.

The Ramanujan Fellowship is targeted at global talent in scientific and engineering who are keen to take up scientific research positions in institutions and universities in the country.

“I never debated coming back to India. The Ramanujan fellowship is an excellent initiative to provide startup, flexible funds to scientists who wish to return.

Having a constant inflow of funds for the first five years, which are the most important formative years for an experimental lab, was the main incentive for me to apply for this fellowship,” she says. Gupta is at home at IITKanpur.

“The best thing about working in India is the satisfaction of being able to contribute, in however small way, towards education in India.

The pool of researchers and scientists in India is still very small relative to the size of our young population.”

Lipi Thukral computational biologist, Institute of Genomics & Integrative BiologyOne of Lipi Thukral’s favourite quotes is by American televangelist Robert Schuller: “Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.” The context is her “hope” for an improvement in the status of science in India.

“My past years of scientific investigation suggest that one can do great science in India as long as we do not relegate it to second place,” says Thukral, who has been working as a computational biologist at the CSIR Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi, since 2012.

Thukral has just finished a short-term deputation to a laboratory in Germany. She had done her PhD there — from the University of Heidelberg in 2011 — followed by a short postdoctoral at the University of Southampton, UK.

She came back to India in 2012 under the INSPIRE Faculty award. Her research area explores interdisciplinary sciences to study how proteins interact with lipids (fat) in our body.

Getting the independent fellowship, she feels, was the main incentive behind her return to India. However, she is candid enough to not rule out the possibility of going bac”, not immediately but at some point in time.

“Perhaps. Although the current science scenario is far better than it used to be, there exist certain problems.” The biggest challenge is bolstering R&D programmes focusing on basic science and technology. “Many researchers focus on short-term deliverables and basic research is ignored. The funding opportunities are also shrinking and this will further limit our efforts.”

Arindam Sarkar is not too comfortable with funds driving research. He gives the example of the “massive funding” by the Obama administration on batteries, which has “pushed most research work in electrochemistry towards batteries. My passion should drive my research, not funds,” he says.

Passion is what fuelled Sarkar’s journey, from the small town of Kuju in Jharkhand’s Ramgarh district to a PhD at the University of Texas in Austin, and then a postdoctoral from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Before that he made an unsuccessful attempt at an IIT exam and settled for the Bhilai Institute of Technology in Durg, from where he moved to IITBombay for his master’s.

“Returning to India was always at the back of my mind. When I was offered the Ramanujan Fellowship, I grabbed it,” says Sarkar, who came back in 2013. He is currently working at IIT-Bombay as an assistant professor in the department of chemical engineering. The Ramanujan Fellowship, he says, provides a handsome grant for conducting experiments, hiring students in addition to a monthly salary.

Ask him whether he would like to go back to the US after some years, and he replies: “Although it is hard to predict the future, I think I will stay put here in India.” Reason: Unlike the West, India still provides plenty of academic freedom in research.

Aadesh P Singh INSPIRE faculty, department of physics, IIT-DelhiHe’s gone a long way — and to many destinations. After growing up in the village of Taramai in Firozabad, UP, Aadesh Singh packed his bags for an exchange programme in the University of Maryland, US, as part of his PhD from Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Agra.

He then joined the University of Cologne, Germany, as a postdoctoral fellow where he worked on the generation of renewable fuel through the conversion of solar energy into chemical fuel.

In 2012, he was back in India, this time under the INSPIRE Faculty Award of the department of science & technology, and joined IITDelhi for further research in the field of solar water splitting.

“My wife is working as a scientist in a government organisation and I came back from Germany without a second thought,” says Singh.

While he is open to going back to a foreign destination, he says, “The main problem in India is the lack of advanced research infrastructure and funds.

Besides, we do not have a strong academia–industry collaboration for research and development.”

Singh is encouraged by the government’s efforts to reverse brain drain, although he does feel more needs to be done.

“The government and the institutes should work together to provide a more stimulating research environ.”

Bushra Ateeq identifies two problems with the Indian scientific landscape — one structural, and the other cultural. “In India, we are largely dependent on our PhD students who, by the time they are scientifically mature and productive, will graduate and move to the US for their postdoctoral training,” says Ateeq.

The other challenge is dealing with the quintessentially Indian passive mindset of chalta hai. “What I do not like is that there is no respect for time and commitment.”

After growing up in Bareilly, UP, and getting her early education, and then a PhD, from Aligarh Muslim University, she briefly worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the National Institute of Immunology, Delhi, before exploring research opportunities abroad. She got her postdoctoral training from McGill University, Canada, and University of Michigan, US.

After the exposure to foreign research labs, Ateeq came back to India in 2013 as an Intermediate Fellow, Wellcome Trust-DBT India Alliance, and joined IIT-Kanpur’s department of biological sciences & bioengineering as an assistant professor.

Ateeq avers that India needs to attract the best scientists — and not just those of Indian origin. “Government should have schemes to attract foreign researchers as well.”

Sarika Chaudhary Ramanujan Fellow, Institute of Genomics and Integrative BiologyIn 2013, Sarika Chaudhary returned to India and joined CSIR’s Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology as a Ramanujan Fellow. And there’s one reason why she will entertain the thought of going back to the US — not for better opportunities or the lack of them in India but “as a collaborator to learn some of the latest scientific advancements”.

After completing her master’s from Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut, Chaudhary moved to the US in 2000 and was associated with the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the University of Central Florida.

She later moved to the University of California, San Francisco, where she developed a passion for structural biology, before making the trip to India. “Even though I am still getting used to the research environment here, I am satisfied that I am able to serve the people of my country,” she says.

Rewarding performance, she feels, is a surefire way to arrest brain drain. “We need to provide the scientists with opportunities for research funding at par with other international institutes.

The opportunities should be available to researchers on the basis of their ideas and performance during the past five years.”

Syed Mansoor assistant professor, department of biotechnology, Jamia Millia IslamiaBorn in Jaipur, Syed Mansoor got a chance to do postdoctoral research in the University of Illinois in 2008. After three years, he joined Yale University and got a faculty position there. He returned to India in 2015 under the Ramanujan Fellowship.

“It was a tough decision for me; India doesn’t have good research opportunities like in the West, and the salary is much less. But after a lot of introspection, I decided to return,” says Mansoor.

The Ramanujan Fellowship, he says, provides a platform for independent work. “You can run your own lab and you can apply for better funding. I got a permanent position in Jamia Millia Islamia in March 2016, within a year of my return,” Mansoor adds.

Mansoor reckons the government should organise more fairs and events abroad to make scientists aware of new opportunities in India.

“There are many problems in the scientific terrain of India, lack of funds and resources being the main ones. But I love my country and will never go again to any foreign shore for work,” he says.